Archive updates

Published on 12 April 2023

New to the archives

The Stonnington History Centre was recently gifted some new archival materials.

In the 1980s and 1990s, before photographs routinely appeared in real estate campaigns, commercial illustrators were commissioned to produce drawings for advertisements. Margaret Picken was one such artist. Margaret recently donated her collection of drawings of Stonnington residences to the History Centre. They are a valuable record of houses that may have since been demolished, such as the one pictured here at 32 Hyslop Parade in Malvern East, drawn in 1993.

You can find more of her illustrations on our catalogue.

Schools are also great places for capturing historic moments and milestones and a vast number of images have been captured over the years to mark their contribution to and significance for the local community.

Pictured here is a photograph of the 1936 grade prep class at Malvern East Central School (now Lloyd Street Primary School). The photo was donated to the Stonnington History Centre by Malvern Historical Society. We don’t know if the dog is a student’s (or even a teacher’s) pet.

Did you know there is park in Stonnington that has a link to Young and Jackson’s Hotel and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)?

John Henry Connell worked with his uncle Thomas Jackson at the Prince’s Bridge Hotel (Young and Jackson’s), before making his fortune as a publican in his own right.

A generous man, Connell donated a valuable collection of decorative arts and furniture to the NGV and gifted a parcel of land in Greville Street to the then Prahran Council, known as Connell Park, for use as a children’s playground.